‘Take the fight to them with everything we have’

In 1980-81 I served aboard a U.S. Navy Destroyer for 204 days off the coast of Iran during the Iran Hostage Crisis in an area known to sailors as GONZO Station. In the 33 years since then, the situation has only gone from bad to worse because of a global inability to deal with radical Islam in a meaningful way.

We have witnessed U.S. embassy and Marine barracks bombings in Kenya and Beirut; tanker wars in the Persian Gulf; attacks on the U.S. ships Stark, Cole and Samuel B. Roberts; the Persian Gulf War; Iraq War; and the Afghanistan War.

We have seen an American ambassador killed in Benghazi; a two-star general recently killed in Afghanistan; and over 6,800 U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and 51,000 wounded.

The list goes on ad nauseam.

Now we have a former detainee, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was released from U.S. custody at Camp Bucca in 2004, leading an army of Islamic terrorists across Iraq and Syria, capturing U.S. weapons from retreating Iraqi Army soldiers and using those weapons to inflict barbaric atrocities on innocent people just because they do not subscribe to ISIS’ twisted brand of Islam.

They are committing genocide before our very eyes, and little is being done to stop it.

Now they have beheaded American journalist James Foley and are threatening to behead Steven Sotloff, a journalism graduate of the University of Central Florida.

To paraphrase Adm. Bull Halsey (World War II): Radical Islam hates our guts like the devil hates holy water. Until they surrender, and are completely disarmed, the best present insurance for our future safety is to take the fight to them with everything we have.